Data Warehouse Is Not Dead As You May Think

There is a popular belief that the data warehouse is dead and that the Big Data initiatives and Hadoop have replaced the data warehouse. None of the above sayings are true, argues a new research, which shows that data warehouse is very much alive and that nobody including Hadoop is killing it. In fact, 70 percent CIOs said that they are increasing their investments in data warehousing and almost one third are already using cloud data warehouses, said the Dimension Research survey.

The survey reported that 96 percent do not see Hadoop as a replacement to their existing data warehouse. In fact, many of them belive that Hadoop is accentuating the critical importance of a platform for centralized data governance and master data management within big data environments. Moreover, through the power of fluid interfaces among Hadoop, RDBMSes, and other data platforms within hybrid “logical data warehouses,” all of these data platform markets are showing good results.

The survey also shows that interest in big data is high, with nine out of 10 respondents indicating they’ve considered an investment, but only 11 percent of respondents have a pilot in place, and just 5 percent have fully deployed a big data initiative. One of the big data roadblocks might be Hadoop itself, with an overwhelming majority of respondents expressing concerns, specifically about access to expertise.

“Hype has created confusion about what is really happening with big data initiatives,” said Diane Hagglund, principal at Dimensional Research. “Although interest in big data is high, this study found that big data initiatives and Hadoop have not diminished the importance of the data warehouse — data warehousing remains critically important and will not be replaced by Hadoop.”

As Dennis Duckworth, senior researcher at IBM notes in this recent blog, the “data warehousing is dead” mentality is starting to recede from industry discussions. At the recent Strata conference, he asserts that data warehousing as a practice is thriving. “It is now perceived as an important new addressable growth frontier for the Hadoop industry,” he said.

It is not surprising then that almost two-thirds of survey participants have data in the cloud – either in SaaS applications like Salesforce.com or in public infrastructure clouds like Amazon AWS. And among the companies with data in the cloud, at least 80 percent said they are bringing at least some of it into a data warehouse.

Going forward, more companies will have access to affordable data analysis and data warehousing in the cloud, and companies will gain compelling new options for their data warehousing requirements, summed up Brad Kern, senior vice president, Worldwide Alliances, Informatica.

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